June 29 ~ True Conviction is the Quiet Knowledge that Your Path is True

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1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21

Psalm 16

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Luke 9:51-62

(The content of this sermon was 100% written in Canada by a human)

It has now been 20 years since I was introduced to one of the most remarkable people I have ever met. More than ten years ago, I spoke of Fahima Osman in a sermon. Fahima was discovered by a certain Globe writer I know, who had been given the challenge of finding the first Canadian-trained doctor to be produced by Toronto’s Somali community. The Globe found Fahima close to graduating from medical school at McMaster University, having defied the greatest of odds to get there. She arrived in Canada at the age of 11, crossing in from the United States with her parents and her younger siblings, with few family photos and a couple of bags of luggage. Her family was poor and had to start over from scratch. Fahima held down a part-time job to help pay the bills and studied with As posted up around her desk to remind her of her goals – in defiance of teachers who had told her not to aim so high. Her parents didn’t know any doctors to help her make connections, and when she got into medical school, she arrived without any mentors. And yet a year after The Globe story, Dr. Fahima Osman graduated from McMaster.

When I met Fahima, it was clear how she had achieved this goal: she was fierce and smart and determined, and she had the loving support of her family and siblings.

Erin remained in touch with her, and recently this year, followed up with a story to update us on where she has landed now. She is an experienced breast cancer surgeon. In these past years, Dr. Osman has worked diligently to improve patient care in Canada and to educate women about breast cancer. She will start this month at a new job, working exclusively as a cancer surgeon, while also training upcoming med students how to innovate and become entrepreneurs in their own right.

When asked if she would ever consider leaving Canada for a larger salary in the United States, Dr. Osman was unequivocal: she would never leave the Canada that had welcomed her family so long ago. Her goal, she said, is to improve the system, serve her patients, and fall asleep each night, knowing she has done her best.

When I hear the political discourse about newcomers to Canada, and some of the hate that seeps across the border from the United States, I always think of Fahima Osman, and wonder: are we doing all we can to create more proud Canadians like her?

This Canada Day, especially, is a moment to consider our values, to ask what we are celebrating. As a country, we have been, mostly to our credit, pretty good at self-criticism, at recognizing our failings and injustice, particularly to Indigenous Canadians, and trying, though imperfectly, to make amends. Around the world, we see democracies and cultures of openness and tolerance under threat, and we are called to look within ourselves and ask, what will we safeguard here in this country built by immigrants? An advertisement I heard recently pointed out that when you go to an airport, where people are coming and going from all parts of the country and world, anyone and everyone is or could be Canadian. You have only to travel yourself to know that this is a unique accomplishment of diversity.

The story of Fahima returned to me this week – not just because it’s Canada Day weekend – but because of the lesson in the gospel. Jesus sounds at his most severe. He has met someone in a village on his way to Jerusalem. “Follow me,” he tells the person. “I will follow you,” the person agrees. “But let me first say farewell to those at home.” That doesn’t seem unreasonable – after all, back then, leaving home often meant never going back again, especially travelling with Jesus into his risky future. But Jesus is stern: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Reign of God.”

That’s pretty harsh. I know if I were heading off on a potential one-way journey, I might want to say good-bye to a couple of people I live with, let them know what happened to me. But Jesus is having none of it: Come now or don’t bother at all, he seems to be saying. That’s a lot to ask.

But what does he really mean? These days, it seems we are full of buts, maybes, perhapses, or we’ll sees. We hesitate when we should act. We deliberate when the choice is clear. Only a literalist would assume Jesus was urging young people to abandon their families without a word – after all, he valued his own family, including the disciples, and took great care, as we learn later, with his own reassuring goodbyes.

Jesus was saying something deeper than that. He was saying if you are going even to try to follow the gospel, you’d better be all in. You can’t do it halfway, or when it’s convenient, or when the right people are looking. Sometimes, you have to make the world a better place without the chance to put your affairs in order.

And think about it – it’s hard enough to uphold a value when you believe it to be unbendable. If you are fluttering about a principle like a leaf, someone is going to come along and blow you down. You couldn’t go into the gospel – and you certainly couldn’t join Jesus back then – if you weren’t willing to take some pretty clear risks and make some obvious sacrifices. You had to be all in. No looking back. Committed.

Jesus also knew we’d mess up and have to start again. It’s like anything we put our hand to – if we aren’t committed to it, when things start to go a little wrong, we bail right way. It’s like the job that you really want to quit the first two weeks, but then you realize a month in that it’s where you want to be. Or the skill you want to learn, that’s really hard work in the beginning. Or the country that you believe in, that occasionally disappoints you. If you aren’t committed, why would you keep trying? Hit the first roadblock, and who wouldn’t bail?

So that’s what Jesus is really saying: it’s a hard road, and you’d better be sure you want to be on it, so that even if you fall along the way, you’ll find the strength to get up. Only in this way are great countries born, and communities built – because adversity strikes and fires rage and floods happen – and you have to keep going. Indeed, Fahima Osman is an example of this – through sheer will and determination she succeeded. She was all in, fierce and committed.

Many of us will know some young graduates – like Dr. Osman so many years ago -leaving one stage of life and entering another – heading off to university, or to a new school, the next step in getting older. One of the qualities that I would most want for them – as a pastor and a parent – is the power of conviction: not just knowing what is right but holding to it. This is the same posture I wish for my country, as a Canadian: that despite a more dangerous and uncertain world, Canada remains an example of tolerance and justice, humility and hope, of the importance of recognizing mistakes and working to correct them, of the strength of diversity. If those convictions hold, then we shall face this unsettled time without losing ourselves.

That’s what Jesus was saying. Without conviction in the gospel– without that quiet force of will – the world will break us. Conviction isn’t brash. Conviction isn’t about bragging. And it certainly isn’t staying on a path for the sake of staying on a path. True conviction, as Jesus so clearly demonstrated with his own life, is the quiet knowledge that your path is true, and that you won’t be turned from it. Amen

June 22 ~ Be Fearlessly Good to Those Who are Justly Afraid

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Second Sunday after Pentecost

Isaiah 65:1-9

Psalm 22:19-28

Galatians 3:23-29

Luke 8:26-39

(The context of this sermon was 100% written in Canada by a human)

A couple of years ago, a team of researchers set up automated speakers in 21 animal-watering holes in the Greater Kruger National Park, in South Africa. When animals arrived for a drink, the speakers played one of a list of sounds: the growls of a lion, the barking of dogs, the sound of birds, gun shots, and human beings having a calm conversation. The researchers caught on camera how long it took for the animals to flee. As it turned out the results were very clear – and maybe you won’t be surprised. The animals were twice as likely to make a run for it at the sound of human voices than they were when hearing lions or gun shots, and they abandoned their drinks roughly 40 per cent faster. And not just one animal: rhinos, giraffes, warthogs. A leopard even ditched his prey at the sound of a woman’s voice. You can watch it on Tik Tok even now, as The Atlantic helpfully explained in its story on the experiment. That story, incidentally, was called “Animal Are Avoiding Us.” Also, as the story noted, this might not be a bad policy for the animals. We can indeed be a nasty species to those with less power than us.

Fear – the emotion figuring prominently in our gospel this morning – is one of those universal experiences among animals, although scientists are still trying to figure it out: is fear just an instinctive response, or does it require higher-level thinking? Fear can keep animals - and us – alive in bad spots, steering us away from danger. It can also do harm – for example, fearful sparrow parents are less likely to feed their babies.

Fear can be rational – do you really need go to bungee jumping? – and it can be irrational, making us overestimate risks, such as flying, and underestimate other risks, such as driving. Fear can be guided by reasonable cultural information – like when a woman becomes more watchful when approached by a man on an empty street in the dark. And it can also be driven by ignorance , harmful stereotypes and discrimination, such as when that same woman gets more nervous because the man approaching her is black.

Indeed, our fear – of change and difference – is a useful tool for those who would seek to divide society. It can be raised and misdirected in equal measure. When the current US president talks about immigrants being rapists and murderers, he is using misinformation to stoke fear to his best advantage.

So what are we to make of these fearful people in the gospel who come upon Jesus, who had just healed one of their neighbors, and rather than embrace the act, they demand he leave? Certainly, it was as dramatic a healing as Jesus could perform. As the gospel tells us, he pulled the demons out of the man, sent them into a herd of pigs, who then ran into a river and drowned. That is pretty spooky. If the farmer next door came running back from his field telling that story, you might feel the hair rise on the back of your neck.

And yet, when the crowd arrived, what evidence did they see with their own eyes: their neighbor now healed, sitting amiably with Jesus. Are they curious? Do they pause to ask questions? No, they send Jesus packing. And when the man, understandably, wants to go with him, Jesus, tells him to stay, and spread the story of what has happened. That is, in the hopes that fear will subside, replaced by the marvel of the miracle.

Perhaps a more accurate human example of this is the burning of women at the stake for being witches, by leaders fearful of their healing power and influence in society. And while we don’t hear those kinds of specifics in the crowd of people casting Jesus out, surely we can all imagine that one voice rising above, the voice of so-called authority stoking such fear among the others that this man, Jesus, would not stay and remain a threat. If fear is an instinctual, an evolved response meant to protect us from harm, then fear, the more conscious emotion, is also easily manipulated. Combined, these two forms of fear can lead us quite astray.

Just think, for a moment, what these villagers lost. A chance to learn from Jesus. A chance to be healed by Jesus. Their fear cost them these great gifts, and they never even knew it. And isn’t that true with us as well? Fear prevents us from acting or doing; it stops us from opening ourselves up to new people and experiences. But we just go on afterwards, the same as always. Because we cannot know the richness of life, the teaching moments, the valuable friendships that we have missed out on.

This week we celebrated World Refugee Day. Our work as a community to change lives has continued. We recently received Sened here in Ottawa after three years of work and prayer to get her from Africa; while fleeing one war, she landed in another country. Can we even imagine the fear of that experience? And Robel and his family have just been given notice that they will be coming to Canada in 5-7 weeks after 10 years of waiting to get here. Again, imagine the fear they have experienced from all they have seen in conflict ridden Ethiopia, and the fear they feel now, coming to an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people?

The gospel this morning is a reminder to listen carefully to our fears. They always tell us something. Our hairs rise on the back of our neck, and we step more carefully in a dark room at night. Fear prevents us from taking dumb risks. Fear makes us aware of legitimate risks.

But the fear that listens to the wrong voices also rejects people who are different, or worse, does harm to them. This fear stymies the diversity that leads to innovation. That fear feeds on racism and homophobia and xenophobia. That fear does not save us; this fear will be what dooms us.

Be careful what voices your fears listen to. What voice at life’s watering hole sends you fleeing? Someday, it might be the politician seeking to distract you from his hand in your pocket by making you afraid of your fellow citizen. Someday, it might be the friend at the party with his all-too-convincing fake facts. One day, it might even be the modern version of the swineherd running back to the village who has mistaken a miracle for something wicked.

Be not afraid, the gospel tells us. Listen to God’s voice – the gospel’s spirit, the teaching of Jesus. And be fearlessly good to those who are justly afraid. Amen

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/10/animal-human-interaction-predatory-fear/675649/

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/10/animal-human-interaction-predatory-fear/675649/

June 15 ~ Wisdom is Gained Through Prayer, and Listening to the Whispers from Above

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The Holy Trinity

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Psalm 8

Romans 5:1-5

John 16:12-15

(The context of this sermon was 100% written in Canada by a human)

Today, most of us are celebrating or remembering our fathers and the fatherly influences in our lives, so let’s begin with this question: If you had to describe your father’s character to someone, what is the first story that pops into your mind?

For me, I remember how my father taught young men who were down and out how to build wooden canoes in the basement of the Welland church where he served. And how he would take his four sons to play soccer with the rest of the youth in the neighbourhood, to give our mom a break on Saturdays, and buy a single chocolate bar with the change he had saved up as a mission pastor, and give each person a tiny square, which was enjoyed more than the full chocolate bars other fathers could afford.

Maybe, like my wife, Erin, you have a childhood memory of your father’s selling the family’s old Toyota Tercel to the single mom and then taking it quietly to the mechanic for a tune-up before she came to pick it up. And if you are like most of us, not every story is so charming or caring. Our fathers are human; the stories we tell about them are the memories we choose to keep of them. In a 1950s essay in The Atlantic magazine, Virgina Woolf remembered her father’s magic-like ability to take scissors to paper and produce perfectly formed elephants and monkeys. Last year, in The Atlantic, writer Ross Andersen reminisced about the colourful jokes he made in public that mortified his son, and his own ferocity while playing driveway basketball.

Fathers also have their own stories to tell – throughout history they have often been the ones to detail the adventures, the family history, the hard-luck stories, stories out of a past before we knew them as our fathers. Which ones do you remember still?

And then it pays to think about why? Why these stories? Why these memories? What are we seeking to learn from our fathers – good and bad? How do these stories help us understand them, and thus ourselves?

And how can Holy Trinity Sunday – when we pray, in traditional language, to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – how can this day help us better understand these fatherly influences in our lives, and all the people we love and are yet to meet and will never know?

For starters, while we are remembering our own fathers, let us consider that one father is almost entirely absent from the gospel: Joseph. Jesus goes out in the world to preach and teach and risk his life, and we learn that his mother walks with him for much of the way, but Joseph is not there. According to our Christmas story, Joseph makes one of the boldest choices as a man of his time, and remains faithful to Mary, even with her complicated destiny; he gets her to Bethlehem; he keeps his family safe while they flee, and while Mary is still recovering from childbirth. Back in his hometown, he helps raise this unique son, and teaches him his own trade of carpentry, presumably realizing even then that Jesus would not be taking over the family business – not his earthly family business anyway. And then Joseph disappears from our story completely. It is assumed that he died before Jesus left home and began preaching, which is why Mary came alone. Perhaps the loss of his father wounded Jesus so deeply, it precipitated his heading out on the road. We never hear.

Instead, the father of Jesus in the gospel is God, which cuts down on a certain level of confusion. But if we can understand God as God, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, then we should also remember that Jesus, who was human, carried the stories and lessons of both father and mother. As a human, Jesus walked the world with confidence, and an understanding of human behaviour, in the manner of someone who grew up knowing he was loved and taught to love, well before his adult relationship with God developed.

I know that some of you struggle with this idea of God as father. I encourage you to use whatever word speaks to you: mother, creator. The whole idea of Trinity Sunday is that God can and should be explained through many stories, and from many views. God is God, who defies a full understanding. God is Jesus, who stands with us, protects us and cares for us. And God is the Holy Spirit who exists everywhere, and who, we hope, speaks to us when we need the voice of wisdom – as described in our first lesson – or acceptance as explained in our second, or compassion, as Jesus describes.

As humans we struggle with complexity; we want a simple answer – a God who looks like Santa, sitting up in the clouds. Instead, we are given a greater gift, a sophisticated idea of God. Living in that complexity is good for us; it leads to wisdom, which is ultimately the humble acceptance of what we do not know and never will.

I suspect for many of us, it is the same with our fathers and fatherly influences. Our dads are both knowable and unknowable, present and also untouchable. If your dad is still around, I encourage you to ask some of these questions: what gave your life meaning? what are your regrets? what are the moments you felt happiest? when did you feel closest to God? If your father is no longer with you, reflect on those stories that you remember; in them lies meaning. And in that meaning – our clearer, more compassionate understanding of one another – we learn to savour what we know and accept what we don’t. This is what Trinity Sunday teaches: God is a complicated ideal, and we do not have to know everything for certain; we need only to seize the wisdom however it comes to us -- in our prayers from above, in the whisper of a story from the Holy Spirit, and in the loving, imperfect humans, who, like Jesus, walked life with us, and did their best. Amen